Rain Man and Rule-Following

How Autism can Bring Philosophy to Life

By Robert Chapman

 "Psychologists sometimes characterise autistic people as ‘hyper-systemisers’ or as being ‘context blind’, meaning – more or less – that, rather like computers, they find it hard to process anything vague or dynamic, and are better at dealing with fixed one-to-one rules and systems. Whereas people with Asperger’s or autism might be good at activities with fixed rules (say, chess, or computer programming), when they encounter anything vague, most notably in the social realm, they are often overcome with confusion and anxiety. So Raymond stopped crossing the road when the lights changed because, rather than intuitively knowing what to do, he was following the rules (‘walk’/’don’t walk’) with an icy precision. The lights changed, and that was that."

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